


#46: "Monster"

by theskywasblue



Series: 100 days, 100 prompts [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Drabble Collection, Gen, Horror, M/M, incomplete work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-22 08:16:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9595802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theskywasblue/pseuds/theskywasblue
Summary: It looks like it's growing its way out from inside...





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for 100 days of random prompts.

“Are you sure you wanna do this?”

Nate licked his lips, wiped his free hand across his face. His eyes were bright, feverish, glittering in the lamplight. “I gotta do something. You gotta do something.”

Blue gripped the pliers in a sweaty fist, his stomach rolling anxiously. The wound in Nate’s palm looked...diseased; the flesh split and blistered around the quarter inch of protruding bark. It did look, inexplicably, like it had pushed its way out from the inside. It had barely any give to it when Blue clamped the pliers down on it.

“Breathe,” he said; an instruction to Nate as much as himself. Nate used his free hand to press his wrist against the table until his fingers started to go pale at the tips.

At thirteen years old, Blue had gone over the handlebars of his bike on one of the backroads and knocked out two of his teeth on the top left side. One had come out clean on his rough impact with the ground, but the other had just been loosened, swaying with the pressure of his breathing. He could still remember the sound it made when he ripped it free with bloodied, gritty fingers, the wet crackle of flesh tearing, echoing inside his skull. The bark made a similar sound when Blue wrenched it free, the instant before Nate’s cry of pain drowned it out. Blood rushed in to fill the hole, welling up like groundwater, flowing over Nate’s palm and onto the tabletop as Blue dropped the pliers and scrambled for the stack of gauze, which was soaked through almost immediately.

“You gotta hold this.” He looked up, and Nate’s head was lolling. There was almost no colour left in his face. “Nate!” His head snapped up, and bright, glassy eyes roamed the murky darkness of the kitchen before settling on Blue’s face. Blue swallowed his heart down, and smiled shakily. “Hey Nate, hey - you gotta hold this, okay? Hold tight, and I’m gonna go get something else. This isn’t gonna be enough.”

Blue bolted from the house, into the murky heat of the August night, sucking wet air into his lungs. Storm clouds rolled on the barely-lit horizon, and the heavy wind tasted of burnt ozone. Blue’s fingers left a smear of blood on the frame of the screen door.

Though he was shaky, his heart racing with urgency, something stopped him there, on the edge of the porch, his gaze drawn away from his truck, to the tall grass at the edge of the driveway.

He only saw the shape of it at first - low and heavy in the shadow of the old rain barrel - the eyes didn’t even register until he saw them move, sliding over his body, assessing him. They were the same burnt leaf colour as Nate’s eyes, but brighter, lighting up the darkness like a cat’s eyes. But no cat carried the same malice Blue saw in those eyes; no animal could hate the way those eyes hated him.

Thunder cracked in the distance. Blue took a single, unsteady step off the porch, then another.

“Stay away.” A sudden gust of wind almost washed out his voice. He cleared his throat and tried again. The truck loomed almost close enough to touch. “You stay away from him.”

It hissed at him, like a cornered snake, as Blue put his shaking hand on the driver’s side door, ignoring the heat of the metal against his palm.

“Stay away from both of us.”

He yanked open the door, and the cab light ripped through the growing darkness, blinding him for an instant. When his vision cleared, the eyes, and the shape they were set into had vanished. Blue reached into the trunk and grabbed a rumpled T-shirt from the mess of old receipts and empty takeout coffee cups that filled up the space behind the driver’s seat, and scrambled back into the house, bolting the door behind him.


End file.
